How to Discover the Principles of the Energization Exercises

The Missing Link Betweenthe Body and the Mind

The “missing link” between mind and body, between an idea and it fulfillment, and between aspiration and success is in every case the same thing: energy.

Try this simple experiment:

Raise your right arm. See? All you need do is mentally tell it to rise, and it rises.

Now then, try something else. Tell your arm to rise, but don’t send any energy to make it do so. What happens? It hasn’t moved, has it?

Try something else: Send energy to the arm, but don’t tell the arm to rise. Again, you see? No movement.

We all know that the mind acts upon the body. Medical science accepts that it can sometimes heal the body, too. Happiness has been known to cure. Depression has been known to make people ill.

What is not generally known is the way the mind acts on the body. Moving a limb is so commonplace an act that people take it for granted. What makes it obey our commands? We don’t even bother to ask.

Yet nothing purposeful occurs on its own. There is a missing link here. Why can I tell my arm to rise, and expect it to obey, whereas if I tell a cup on my kitchen table to rise, it won’t? It isn’t only that my nervous system connects the brain to the arm. It’s that I can send energy through the nerves to the arm with my command that it rise.

The mind cannot act directly upon the body. It must act through the medium of energy. The will first acts upon the energy. The energy then acts upon the body.

Become Aware of the Energy

Paramhansa Yogananda said, “The greater the will, the greater the flow of energy.” You can test the truth of this statement very easily. Simply tense your biceps. The more you “will” energy to the biceps, the harder it will tense.

The “Tense, Relax and Feel” Experiment

Close your eyes and gaze, as in meditation, toward the spiritual eye. Concentrate your attention in the area of the medulla. Now tense your right hand and forearm, feeling that you are sending energy from the medulla to hand and forearm. Continue tensing harder and harder until your hand is vibrating with the effort. Now relax the muscles and feel the energy in the area you have just tensed.

At first what you’ll feel is just the tension inside of the muscles. Then you’ll experience the flow of energy which creates the tension in those muscles. Finally, you will become aware of how you can direct that flow. It is important, however, to try to feel the flow of energy. It is essential to concentrate as deeply as possible. Now repeat the same thing on the other side, tensing, and then relaxing, the left hand and forearm.